With the increase in leisure time available to the general population, sports on the amateur and professional level are of ever increasing popularity and consequently have become a major business enterprise. Increasing numbers of fans are attending spectator sporting events as well as participating in individual sports. Concomitant with the increase in sporting activities is a growing interest in sports training on both the professional and amateur level.
Traditionally, training has been carried out by coaches, teachers and other professional persons; however, individual coaching is not always available due to costs or lack of trained personnel. In response to the shortage of skilled coaching personnel and the ever increasing need for training, various mechanical systems have been developed to enhance player ability.
The earliest such systems were utilized to train baseball batters and generally comprised machines for pitching baseballs. The first machines were capable of throwing a single type of pitch at a generally fixed rate of speed, however such machines have increased in sophistication and can now deliver balls at variable rates of speed and in some instances can pitch curves and other breaking balls. Another type of training aid involves targets or other scoring systems adapted to register the hit of a returned ball. Such targets may simply comprise a wall or backstop with a target zone, or in more sophisticated systems may include electronic sensors to detect the position of the hit, as well as indicators for delimiting target areas. Such systems are well represented in the patent art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,309,032 discloses a tennis backboard which can be activated in a predetermined sequence to indicate sections thereof to be hit by the player and to score a number of times such indicated sections are hit. Pat. No. 4,029,315 discloses a football evaluation system in which a target selectively indicates predetermined areas to be struck by a thrown ball and also evaluate the accuracy and strength of a player in throwing a ball to such preselected sections. Pat. No. 4,563,005 discloses a baseball target including a plurality of infrared detectors for determining the trajectory of a thrown baseball.
In some instances ball delivery systems have been combined with target systems to provide for a more sophisticated training apparatus. Pat. No. 3,989,246 discloses a tennis practice system which serves a tennis ball to a player and scores a player's performance in returning the ball to a zoned target. Pat. No. 4,116,437 discloses a similar tennis training apparatus which serves balls to a player and scores the return shot on the basis of location as well as speed.
The foregoing apparatus are indicative of the interest in, and need for sports training equipment. However, all of the foregoing apparatus suffer from the general deficiency characterizing the prior art insofar as they are not adaptive in their performance to a player's level of skill. By adaptive, is meant a training system which is capable of sensing a player's level of skill and adjusting its performance to that level on a continuous basis so that in the course of a training session the system will accommodate an increasing or decreasing level of skill. In this regard, adaptive training systems more closely approximate play with a human opponent. While prior art systems may in some instances be preset to approximate various skill levels, as for example by adjusting the speed and placement of thrown balls or by adjusting target areas; a player's skill level will change throughout a game and it is well known that maximum training benefits accrue when a player can train with an opponent capable of establishing a proper pace. As a player's skill improves, a skilled trainer, or an adaptive system can increase the level of challenge presented so as to secure peak performance. Likewise, a skilled trainer or an adaptive system can moderate the level of play to suit a tiring player so as to still maintain interest and motivation.
The need for an adaptive sports training system should be readily apparent from the foregoing, as should be the fact that heretofore available sports training apparatus was not capable of functioning in an adaptive manner. The present invention provides for sports training systems in which a feedback is established from a target or from the player to a ball delivery system whereby a player's accuracy, speed and endurance in returning balls establishes the pace and difficulty of the training regimen. A system of this type may also include a display unit to display the player's score or to display a simulation of a sporting event so as to present realistic decision making situations, which the player will react to by appropriately returning the delivered ball. The system can be readily adapted to a variety of sporting events and in a variety of modes. For example, in a baseball simulation, the system may be used to deliver a pitched ball to a batter or catcher, or to simulate a hit ball for delivery to a fielder or a pitcher who will return the ball to an appropriate section of a target area. These features and advantages of the present invention, as well as other features and advantages will be readily apparent from the drawings, discussion and claims which follow.